


like the stars chase the sun

by desastrista



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: F/M, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7848535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/pseuds/desastrista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captive Prince Week Day 3 - Family</p><p>Jokaste does not like to think about her family. Memories of family are memories of hunger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the stars chase the sun

**Author's Note:**

> I don't remember much ever being canonically stated about Jokaste's life before Damen and Kastor. I do remember Laurent calls her a whore -- which is probably hyperbole -- but I included a very brief segment about her working in a brothel.

Jokaste did not like to think about her parents. Memories of her childhood were memories of hunger. Her father had died when she was little, and her mother had done whatever was necessary to feed Jokaste and her siblings. But there had never been enough food to go around. As a child, Jokaste had always gone to bed with an empty stomach. 

Perhaps if she had not lived in Ios, she would not have minded: she would simply have assumed that was the way the world was. But she lived in the shadows of the Palace walls. The Palace was a marvelous thing. In the sunlight, its walls would seem to glow; at night, it kept a silent watch over the sprawling city at its feet. Jokaste heard wild tales from the Palace. There were feasts that never ended. Gold was so plentiful they gave it to the slaves to wear. It was a place meant to inspire awe, fear, fealty. 

In Jokaste it just inspired her ambition. “One day,” she told her mother, “I’m going to live in that Palace.” 

Her mother had laughed at that. “Maybe,” she conceded, sounding amused, “If you are very lucky and you work very hard, you might find work there as a servant.” 

Jokaste dreamt of what the Palace would be. And when she was old enough, she left her family behind, and went to work in a brothel not too far from the Palace. She entertained diplomats and sailors and all sorts and learned much of the world. 

Until one day she caught the attention of a Prince.

 

***** 

 

Damen was unlike anyone that Jokaste had met before. Of course – he was a Prince. But it was more than that. There was a kindness to him, simple and unwavering, that felt strange and alien and yet so welcome to Jokaste. Even as he showered her with expensive gifts, even as he arranged a room for her in the Palace, it was his kindness that Jokaste marveled at the most. 

But what she reveled in was by how much she had gone beyond what her mother had even dared hoped for her. 

There were so many firsts with Damen. The first time a Palace slave knelt before her. The first time she wore gold and gemstones and other finery – and the first time she put them on without marveling over them first. The first time she woke up in a bed in the Palace and did not feel like an intruder who might be discovered and thrown out at a moment’s notice. The first time that she slept with Damen and thought only of herself and him, and not what the world would say about it. 

There was a promise that Damen dangled in front of her. The promise that she could live this life forever. That he could be her family. 

But not all every first could be pleasant. 

There was the first time she met Kastor. 

“Jokaste,” he had said, as he bent down to kiss her hand. “My brother speaks so highly of you.”

“Not, I am sure,” she had said, smile thin, “As highly he speaks of you.” 

Damen always praised Kastor. He was a good warrior, Damen said, loyal and true. Jokaste wasn’t sure what it was about Kastor that had caught her attention. Maybe it was the way that Kastor’s lips lingered too long on her hand. Maybe it was how when he spoke of Damen, he raised the corner of his lip, but his face bore neither amusement or affection. Maybe there was something else. Jokaste only marveled that Damen could not see it. She tried to ask Damen about his brother later, but Damen only repeated his praise. 

It was only when Kastor had gone, and Damen had left as well, did Jokaste think that perhaps she recognized the hunger in Kastor’s eyes because she had never let go of her own. 

She kept a close watch on Kastor after that. She started to pay attention to all the gossip in the Palace regarding the King, and Kastor, and Kastor’s ambitions. And when her suspicions were confirmed, she started to sleep with Kastor for the information and the leverage it provided. 

She had started to create a family for herself in the Palace and she was not going to let anyone take that from her. 

 

******

 

Jokaste was alone when she gave birth to her child. She was the Queen, she had clawed her way up to the very top, and yet like a fool Meniados had left her behind as he abandoned Karthas. Only a few servants were loyal enough to stay by her side. Sometimes her thoughts dwelled on revenge for having been left behind. Sometimes her thoughts focused on survival. Sometimes it was difficult to disentangle the two. 

Somewhere between the desire for revenge and the desire to survive was how it felt when she sent her child away. 

She waited, knowing that Damen and the army he had assembled were marching on Karthas now. She did not have much time before they found her. A servant told her hoofbeats had been heard on the horizon. She took a seat on the couch and closed her eyes. Plans and contingencies blossomed in her mind. She knew all the players. She was familiar with this game. And she was so, so close to winning. The kyroi had been unwilling to accept her because of her low birth, but she was gaining their respect. Damen would not risk open warfare across Akielos and the Regent swore he knew how to nip Laurent’s insurgency while it was still in the bud.

She just had to keep playing the game. 

And then she thought about her child and the expression on its face when it looked at her, just before she sent it away, and her breath was ragged in her chest. 

She was so, so close to losing everything. 

Jokaste did not like to think about her family. Memories of family were memories of hunger. She had always been ambitious and always wanted more; she had started with nothing and yet made herself queen.

But she had lost so much along the way. Even as queen, she could still not command respect; she had been left almost entirely alone in an abandoned fort by one of her husband’s closest allies. She had betrayed Kastor. She had betrayed Damen. She had long ago left behind her mother and her siblings. She hadn’t even stopped along the way to wonder what might have happened to them. 

But the child was something else. The child was a way to start again. 

“They will be here soon,” a woman’s voice was telling her. 

“Let them come,” she replied. 

For the first time, she found herself thinking that she did not need to win the game. She would get her child back and have victory on her own terms.


End file.
